'Nothing has changed since the day I started with Gordon, I'm treated the same'

Get a wriggle on, Jack. Jones's bar, smack-bang in the centre of Clane in County Kildare, is quite a charming spot and might turn into San Antonio every Saturday night but when you're sitting on your tod and sipping your third bottle of sparkling water of a Tuesday evening it has all the ambience of an arena hosting a game of chess between Gordon Brown and Graeme Souness.

This is the rescheduled meeting too. We lost the original fixture 24 hours earlier because of a beerlogged pub in Trim that played host to an impromptu Cheltenham afterparty for all of Gordon Elliott's staff, so 4pm on Monday was refixed for 5.30pm on Tuesday. It's now 6.30pm on Tuesday and there is no sign of the 18-year-old who rode four winners at Cheltenham, three of them in Grade 1s.

Shortly after 6.50pm in wanders a timid teenager wearing a red hoodie, navy tracksuit bottoms and Converse, looking like a petrified schoolkid about to tell his geography teacher the dog ate his homework. Let's hear this excuse then, Jack. It had better be good.